Slave-Trade Research

 More research in the slave-trade and slavery. An EXCELLENT article by Marley Brown in this month's Archaeology Magazine about the excavations at Christiansborg Castle in Ghana - about what life was like in the sixteenth century, in a slave-trade depot run by European slavers who traded with the local Africans who actually captured and brought in captive fellow-Africans to sell. The evidence of a small but thriving mixed-race community around the castle walls - and the fact that the (Danish, in this case) slavers would often send their mixed-race sons to be educated in Denmark - was absolutely not something I expected to find.

And it brought up - as slave-trade research always does for me - the shocking contrast of the "business-as-usual" images of the people involved in the trade who weren't its victims, but its perpetrators. When I read about the accounting procedures on plantations, or the fact that plantation owners could purchase PRE-PRINTED FORMS to catalog slaves - or, in this case, these thriving little communities of whites and Africans around the trade bases in Africa - I am both horrified and fascinated. I keep wondering, "WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE???"

As I tell my students, the study of History is fascinating, but frequently leads to hatred of humankind.

In other news: The Darwath Trilogy (Time of the Dark, Walls of Air, Armies of Daylight) downpriced in digital through Open Road Media, Monday, Oct. 11 - US and Canada, $2.99.

Comments

  1. Robert PiepenbrinkSeptember 8, 2022 at 6:27 PM

    Bear with us. The whole "empathy with strangers" thing is only about 2,000 years old. We've made some progress, mostly. We've been working on government for at least twice that long with virtually no progress. But if there is not always empathy, there is frequently love. I studied many years ago under the late Dr. George Kren--an Austrian Jewish refugee and noted atrocity expert. He told us that virtually anyone could be gotten to participate in a massacre. (Pardon me if I fail to discuss how this is done.) But he also told us that every member of the Nazi hierarchy was sheltering one or more Jews. Whatever they believed in the abstract, and whatever aided their ambitions, they made exceptions and took risks for people they knew. It's a start.
    If you want to foster hatred of mankind, training in military intelligence may be a better bet than history, and it's much the same skill set.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Even More Fun With Research

Image
Here's an old one, to remind me that I really do need to get back to painting. Having turned in the manuscript for the next Hollywood murder mystery just before Christmas, I've been putting together outlines for what I hope will be the next Ben January book (# 21!) and the next Hollywood book (which will take place mostly in the film industry in New York, which was just as much a center of motion picture production in the mid-'20s as Hollywood was, and a lot more fun after hours). Writing up an outline is like pre-writing the book. I, at least, have to figure out what happens, and how; who's the villain, who gets killed, and why. Any murder mystery is actually two stories: the story of the crime itself, and then the story of how Mr. Holmes or Lord Peter or Professor Tamar figures out whodunnit. And, in my case at least, to give a picture of the world, the society, in which such events take place, which is a large part of the fun. It's one reason I love historicals. ...
Read more

Sample Post

Image
     A girl once went to the fair to hire herself for servant. At last a funny-looking old gentleman engaged her, and took her home to his house. When she got there, he told her that he had something to teach her, for that in his house he had his own names for things.      He said to her, "What will you call me?"    " Master or mister, or whatever you please, sir," says she.      He said, "You must call me master of all masters . And what would you call this?" he said pointing to his bed.      "Bed or couch, or whatever you please, sir."     " No, that's my barnacle . And what do you call these?" said he, pointing to his pantaloons.     "Breeches or trousers, or whatever you please, sir."     "You must call them squibs and crackers . And what would you call her?" he said pointing to the cat.     "Cat or kit, or whatever you please, sir."     "...
Read more

Entirely Too Much Fun With Research

Image
  My apologies for the long hiatus, once again. In addition to finishing the usual round of line-edit + copy-edit on the next Hollywood book, Saving Susy Sweetchild, a lot of things to do: minor health fixes, the Gallifrey One convention, and the Los Angeles Vintage Paperback Book Collectors Show (and a couple of truly lovely evenings with friends). The Paperback Show is always entertaining. In addition to a staggering number of old paperbacks - many of which I remember reading in the '60s (there was a bookstore on Holt Blvd in Pomona that I'd bike down to on Saturdays: we referred to it as "Dirty Earl's" because of the goods on offer in the store's back room) - there are dealers specializing in the cover-art of the 1940s-1970s era. And, the show (and especially Tom Lesser - Thank you, Tom!) makes sure it has a day-long rotation of authors to sign those paperbacks. In addition to chats with fan and writer friends, I found such things as English translations of...
Read more